Chapter 13: The Gala Dress

"Let me explain," Matilda said again.

"Go on."

Eli stayed in the doorway with the width of the steel counter between them.

"Judith will never sign anything in private," Matilda said. "Zach told me so himself. It has to be public, and it has to look like her idea."

"So?"

"So I give her a stage. Three hundred people, the press, and her own fountain pen in her hand."

"And then?"

"And then everyone in that room hears where the money went."

Eli looked at the dish of cold spaghetti.

"And Zach thinks you're coming home," he said.

"Zach thinks I'm so tired I'll believe anything he cries at me."

"Are you?"

"No." She held his eyes. "Ask me the rest. Term three goes both ways."

"Do you want to go home with him?"

"No."

"Then I believe you," Eli said, and the cold in his voice did not move. "Believing you was never the trouble."

He took his scone and his coffee, and left her cup on the counter, and went back down the street in the rain.

Dot came out of the walk-in the moment the bell stopped.

"I heard none of that," she said.

"Dot."

"Not a word. Only that he's gone quiet, and quiet men are the worst. They build things."

At noon she had the blue dress from the lawn spread over the back table, with its long slit up the skirt.

She basted it shut with her reading glasses on the end of her nose.

"Nobody sees a stitch from the third row," she said. "Stand up straight in it and look like a woman who is coming home."

"I'm going to look like a woman holding a pen."

"Same face," said Dot.

At six a courier brought a cream envelope from Zach.

Inside was a clean copy of the Release of Lien, with Judith Caldecott, President typed on the blank line under his own signature.

Matilda read it twice and folded it into the pocket of her apron.

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